The time finally came for our long awaited pre-christmas trip to Cologne. We'd been trying to do this since 2020, a plan to take in christmas markets and let the boys tick off a new country too. We have rescheduled the original Eurostar tickets several times, and even after the trip starts the rescheduling would not be over, but more of that later.
We were running late on leaving, as always. We had flipped and flopped on what train we should get up to London and settled on 11am. I had to drop Clare and the boys there, drive to somewhere I could leave the car for free for three days and run back. The train was a little late so as it turns out we had time. A late train! Imagine! We had time to spare at St Pancras so wondered around looking for suitable food and drinks. We even left St Pancras and went into Kings Cross, everywhere was very busy.
The Eurostar process is as smooth as I'd like. You still get shunted from place to place and have to wait seemingly unnecessarily. It's better than an airport, but not as good as it should be. Still, we're on, and underway. We missed the glimpse of Folkestone and were soon under the actual seabed. I didn't realise this was the first time the boys had done this trip this way, they had only been on the Eerotunnel before in a car. We stopped in Lille, so technically we went to France too on this trip, and then on to Brussels.
The area around the station is a bit grim, and in the rainy weather it did not really improve as we walked to our hotel. We were staying at the Novotel City Centre this time. We checked in planning on a quick turnaround as we had not a lot of time in Brussels. We were slowed down by our room having only two beds and a cot in it, rather than a bed for each of us, but Clare called reception and someone came up to fix it. They planned to fix it by putting another cot in the room, maybe we did not explain clearly. It would later be fixed, while we were out, with a bed for all of us.
Brussels was wet, quiet, and a lot of it was closed. It was a Monday night but we expected it to be more lively. We went to Grand Place, and there was a nativity scene set up there but not a lot of action. After walking round and rejecting a few places we went to Brasserie Ommegang Chalet, and it was good. It wasn't cheap, but it was nice. I only had a vegeburger, the others had two pasta dishes and a steak. The decor of the place was great, the entrance was like an alpine lodge, not sure why. There was a polar bear looming over the tables. I thought it might be cold there so opted for inside instead. We had a normal table but some of the tables wereinside huge barrels. I have always wanted a barrel big enough to get inside. That's what I originally wanted as a shed, but where do you find such things? I'm not sure if I'm indulging my inner Hobbit here, I think there's more to it. I remember a TV version of The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn and I'm sure he lived in a big barrel.
The hotel was pretty noisy, there was noise from outside and noise inside too. Not the best night's sleep.
There was a pool and spa in this hotel, so the boys and I used that in the morning. It's a small pool, looked to have quite a good gym attached, and sauna too. Not big enough to actually swim in but we had a nice splash about. There were a couple of other families in there too with the same idea.
We walked to the Manekin Pis statue / fountain as T2 has wanted to see it for a while. He was quite underwhelmed, it is very small. We bought gifts and failed to find a good cafe to go in, so settled on something at the station. Yes a flying visit through Brussels really, its only purpose was to break up our journey to Cologne. Originally it was meant to break up the journey back, and how I wish we had been able to stick with that, but the trains just did not work out on this rescheduled trip.
Train to Cologne was similar to last time I did this journey, just in the daylight. Well sort of daylight in this gloomy weather. The train had already come from Paris, and would stop at Liege and Aachen before Cologne. Cologne itself was very different in the rain, there was none of the festival atmosphere that I saw from the street drinkers and backpackers on the steps of the cathedral last time. Our hotel was very close indeed, and very nice indeed. A step up from the sort of places we normally stay at. The bar looked swanky, and while our room was only on the first floor strangely we could not go up the stairs to it. You could only go down the stairs, and not get back in that way. Security I guess. Our room was big and very nice, large comfy bed, great pillows, separate bathroom and loo, separate bath and shower, loads of space... but still missing a bed again like the last one. They sorted this quite tuickly for us again though.
We hit one christmas market right away, we got some mulled wine as our first priority. You had to leave a deposit for the cups, they're quite big on this in Germany. Good for the environment, not sure we saw any disposable cups. We also went in the place that I'd seen on my previous visit. I could see there was a lively party bar that also looked traditional, though I did not go in it last time. This time we went in and sat for a drink. The live music action I'd seen was part of a paid for show upstairs, but we just took a table and ordered some Kolsch beer. T2 learned how to build a house out of beer mats but was not too pleased when they fell down. We went to another market and onto a rickety ferris wheel, they enjoyed this a lot. We must have eaten somewhere1. We went back to the hotel and I went to the bar. I got an unexpectedly amazing cocktail while waiting for the boys to get off to sleep. I ordered at random really, and it came out under a glass dome filled with smoke. Very impressive! Not cheap, but impressive. I saw a drink delivering robot trundling through the bar too. I think we all slept really well in that hotel.
Updating this a few days later on Boxing Day with more impressions of Cologne. We did more christmas markets the next day, and also T2 and I did ice skating. He insisted on it, I would have skipped it, though he did not get on very well with it at all. He fell over, and where it was not very cold it was very wet on the ice. This put him off entirely, but I really enjoyed it. It was a much larger ice rink than when we did this in London recently, there were two big round parts to it and then two narrower bits joining them together. We didn't have a time limit on this either, but we did have to pay extra to hire the skates.
We did some window shopping in Cologne too, we went in SuperDry and nearly bought stuff. And we went in a pub too. It wasn't as olde worlde and traditional as I would have liked but it was somewhere nice to sit down and play games. For our dinner that night we ate food from the markets, mulled wine and sort of hash browns for me. We went back to the hotel bar so Clare could have the same amazing cocktail experience I had the night before... we chose different cocktails and while hers was nice, mine was disapointing, and neither had the impressive show of the smoker and the bell jair.
Our next morning breakfast was as good as the first day. We maybe ate a little bit more as I wasn't sure when we'd be having lunch, this might be it for the day. I saw the drink delivering robot from the first night, quietly plugged in, recharging.
Our journey back turned into a bit of a stinker really. We had loads of time for our train back from Cologne to Belgium, and when it was called it was very crowded on the platform. Then we waited, and waited. Eventually just after it should have left they put a notice up saying "ten minutes delay". Then another just after that, then another... This happened to me on my trip in the summer too I think. We knew we had eighty minutes to change trains when we did get to Brussels but were getting nervous. People next to us on the platform were in the same boat (unfortunately not an actual boat) of needing to connect with Eurostar. One person phoned up and was quoted £150 to change his ticket to a later Eurostar. I was thinking, we can still make it, it can still work, though Clare was getting quite worried. When it got to fifty minutes delay, this would leave only half an hour to change platforms, check in etc, and they say the gates close half an hour before the Eurostar leaves, so we're not making it. Here I had resigned myself to missing it. Our train actually came in eighty minutes late, so the time the Eurostar would actually be leaving by the time we got to Brussels. Now I phoned Eurostar. The person on the other end was helpful, says they know these things do happen and if we explained when we got there we would still be found a space on the next available Eurostar. Now we know there are only three more Eurostars this day, and there are other people needing to do this so we might be waiting overnight at the station... so instead we paid to transfer onto the next service. FOUR HUNDRED AND FOUR POUNDS! The original tickets should not have cost this much. This journey has cost me a lot as I've already paid twice to change the dates because of covid. At least now we know we're getting home tonight. Hopefully we'll get something back, ideally we'll get that whole fee back as it was Thalys's fault and Thalys and Eurostar are the same company.
The fun wasn't over when we did get back to London. We were hoping to get the 19:07 fast train home, but the Eurostar was even slightly delayed so we looked like missing that... we ran for it anyway and YAY it is actually delayed leaving! We jumped on it and sat down only to find the reason it was delayed. The driver had gone missing, the train was going nowhere. Eventually it left about an hour late.
We got a lift from the station, and I went and got a traditional post-holiday Chinese from Phoenix in Folkestone.
A traumatic end to an ok holiday.
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in Hythe in the far South. Wed + father to two, I am a full stack web engineer, + I do js / nodejs, some ruby, other languages ect ect. I like pubs, parkrun, eating, home automation and other diy stuff, history, tree stuff, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, + TIME TRAVEL.